What makes your work your own?

Shakespeare only “borrowed” stuff, right?

The question of whom a creative work belongs to, on the face of it, is a simple one. Whoever published it, whoever came up with the ideas, has ownership. But if we interrogate this more closely, that latter point — who had the ideas — is more complicated than it may seem. Indeed, if we were to trace back from a book or a song released into the public sphere in 2025, using the concept of an “idea”, we may end our journey in ancient times.

So, with that, what makes a story one’s own? Is it the original idea or the creative process, the assembly of words in a certain order on the page? There is nuance to this, and herein we’ll interrogate it together, whether this be my work…or not.

Inspiration and adaptation

We can be inspired by many sources and in many different ways. It could be the slightest bit of an overheard conversation, the fleeting sight of something, all the way to an entire novel or artwork. Typically, it is the action of someone else that drives us to produce our own work, whether that is in explicit or implicit ways.

Copyright is a legal boundary, firmly setting what can be taken as someone’s ownership over certain creative or intellectual work. Often applied to a certain project, this protects someone’s work from the (*gasp*) public domain. While a given, the layers unravel as we begin to unpick works individually, assessing them for purely “unique” ideas. For example, if someone has gained inspiration from overhearing a conversation, are those ideas not the intellectual property of the person that said it? How far this may stretch adds further depth, since there may be a difference between someone being directly quoted and an essence or mood being taken from a conversation. The inspiring event is left unrecorded, unexposed to public appraisal. Does that make it any less owned by the speaker?

Many also derive ideas from life. People may have like experiences, resulting in overlapping scenarios in books or similar sentiments in songs. No matter how beautiful and complex our feelings are, definable emotions are few, and our language even smaller, meaning that lyrics may reflect each other, as many court cases have shown us. If two people were to write books independently but with the same sentiment, similar stories, like bylines, are they distinct enough to be classed as the creative property of each author individually? It’s all in personal perception, and while I’m largely in the “what is yours is yours” camp, and there may be something beautiful in how our ideas overlap, there is also a grievance in seeing someone else become popular with “your” ideas, or having your stories or art mimicked unintentionally.

This brings me to the side tangent of the bow-and-arrow. A perfect example, this tool for hunting was originally derived multiple times across the globe. This relates to an article I wrote a while ago now (ref), but in essence, it is an argument about what is “originality”, and whether in our modern social media age, anyone can truly be 100% original since we are so surrounded by outside influence.

Adaptations are another interesting sub-topic in this conversation. Directors creating film versions of books, for example, while with the permission of authors or after copyright has expired, have a differing level of ownership or input to their work than the creator of the original story. This isn’t to take away from their work, as direction truly makes the film, but it is to provide an example of how derivative creation can be, even if deeply wonderful.

An interesting example that came up in the ‘In Our Time’ podcast, which inspired this piece, was dictionary definitions. Stripping it right back, this idea demonstrates the extent to which we may cry derivative. It may highlight the “pernickety-ness” of this copyright pursuit, pushing us further and further into a philosophical wasteland.

A more legal side to this, though, is the case when a creative’s work falls out of copyright decades after their death. The limited nature of copyright is contentious, and we have Wordsworth to thank for even having that long. Indeed, we have copyright limits to thank for ‘Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey’; praise or not, that’s up to you.

Posthumous publishing comes under this bracket too. Since the person is no longer around to argue for or against, their unpublished work can be taken and put out there, questioning whether that is any longer their intellectual property to decide what to be done with. Rights shift to surviving relatives, but should they or do they have the authority of the originator just because that person is no longer with us?

The science side

It had to be said, AI (*cringe*). The use of AI as part of the creative process is a back-and-forth issue. Personally, I believe it depends on the degree to which one uses it; for example, a short story written by a couple of ideas popped into a ChatBot versus help with finding synonyms fall into different categories. And how do they even know how to write a story, I hear you cry? By being trained on authors’ work without their knowledge, of course! A huge breach of copyright, and undoable at that, this not only conflates a range of different experiences and writing styles (with distinct exceptions, naturally) into one model, but also trivialises the emotion and process that went into the creation of the original work.

This brings me on to science more directly. When drugs are being trialled and sent to market, groups have to file a patent to ensure full “ownership” of the drug, meaning any sales but also any references are owed directly to them. An interesting caveat to this is the “re-filing” of a given molecule due to ..

When a paper is published, we must provide references to other work, be it in a similar field with previous studies or something more on the methods and experimental side. All of this to say, if we compare the scientific and literary spheres, is the former perhaps more transparent with its source material? Perhaps it is the academic (versus creative) nature of the work, the precise results and clinical application, that enables a clearer delineation of what belongs to whom.

On the other hand, literary endeavours are blurrier, because (a) we cannot necessarily cite our sources in a non-academic work (as we may do for a literature degree, for example) and (b) if we were to try, the lists may be endless and even not fully realised. We draw creative inspiration (and this is not to say that science isn’t creative!) from all over the place constantly, oftentimes on a subconscious level. And who would look at a Matisse and ask him for his sources? Do they want geographical coordinates?

Having the “same idea” arises in science, too! The phenomenon of “scooping papers” is all too real, since there can be labs all over the world working on the same protein or same system. It’s real tough luck, especially if you’re well on the way to achieving something, with projects taking a long time from start to completion. As a random aside, doing more science chat might be something I delve into, so let me know if that sounds interesting!

My inspiration

As the title says on the tin(?), where do I get my inspiration? As previously stated, I think a lot of it is subconscious, picking things up from all around me and having wild ideas that may have been stimulated by something from hours or years ago. You know those funny feelings of deja vu? It’s almost a little something like that.

For my podcast, I get most of my ideas from books, other podcasts, and YouTube commentary. Call me old-fashioned, but a good long form video is a classic, and I tend to pop them on whenever I’m doing something as podcast-esque content. Sometimes I’ll rewatch something to actually sit and take notes, but otherwise I’m holding it in my head, or grabbing my phone’s Notes app.

For my fiction writing, I mood board (or, more accurately, scour Pinterest and save photos to a board that desperately needs some organisation - there’s 810 pins on my novel board at the moment) and collate playlists. My ‘New Novel 2’ playlist is a classic. The books that I read and shows that I watch also serve to give me ideas, as well as the conversations that I engage in (or overhear). When inspiration hits, it’s a great feeling, especially when it comes from unexpected places.

Does it matter?

Where our ideas come from could be talked about for an age. Ultimately, I believe that creativity is creativity, whether inspired closely by another or not. I think there is certainly “stealing”, which is a whole different kettle of fish, but largely I think it’s very possible for people to tell overlapping tales.

If something is copyrighted, it legally belongs to someone, and that is simply the way it is. The expiration of these things is another issue, and it does worry me when someone’s wishes are not adhered to because they are no longer here to stop it.

One’s work can be deeply beautiful, it can be in conversation with other work, it can be inspiring all over again, no matter if it’s a direct adaptation or a fresh take, a slight similarity or greatly different. Perhaps I am wrong to think this, but maybe, if nothing else, this piece will inspire your reaction.